WELCOME, WRITERS

If you've come to this blog, you're probably already a competent writer--or well on your way to becoming one. After all, the surest sign of a good writer is an eagerness to become an even better writer. Writing teachers are also welcome here.

This blog will offer advice on style, grammar, even such mundane matters as punctuation. Good writing is an art, yes, but it is also a craft, like quilting or carpentry or car repair. That means the ability to write is more than just an inborn talent; it is also a skill that can be learned.

Over the years, folks have paid me a lot of money for my writing and for my advice about writing. I've been a senior editor at the New York Times Magazine Group, and I've published hundreds of magazine articles myself. I've taught writing at several universities—most recently Virginia Tech. Corporations like FedEx have hired me to teach their executives how to write better. (Note to teachers: Many of my blog posts originated as lesson plans. Feel free to use them in your own classes.)

Now retired from full-time work, I still teach writing seminars, for free, to worthy nonprofits.

Given all this, I suppose I'm qualified to offer some suggestions about the subject of writing. Much of what I say here has been said in other places--especially in fine books like Strunk and White's The Elements of Style and Donald Hall's Writing Well. You should read those books. Meanwhile, I hope you find some of the advice on this blog useful.

Monday, January 31, 2011

CAN YOU TRANSLATE THIS? 16 Real Examples of Very Bad Writing

Is Ferris Bueller a better writer than his teacher? Probably.

In my previous post (January 28, 2011), I discussed my third rule of good writing: Be precise.

The example of imprecise writing I gave sounded a lot like a teenager: “My teacher is incredible. Her teaching methods are awesome. We can relate to stuff in her class, though sometimes she does weird things.”

As I said before, young people sometimes write this badly not because they lack a more precise vocabulary, but because they lack the time or motivation to think about more precise, specific, and concrete ways of expressing themselves. In my experience, young people actually write pretty well when they care about what they’re writing.

That’s not true of some adults. In fact, much of the worst writing you’ll read comes from the best-educated grown-ups. The sixteen sentences highlighted in red below use language taken from real documents in the world of government, business, and even, sad to say, education. I didn’t make any of this up. You have to work hard to write as badly as what you’re about to read.

[Note to teachers: It’s fun to ask your classes to try to translate these sentences into precise, understandable language. They’re usually pretty good at it and seem to enjoy trying. Then you can discuss what makes each sentence so bad and why people might write this way.]

Only someone with a decent education and a broad vocabulary can write as badly as the sentences you’ve just read. Here, in more precise language, is what the writers were actually trying to say (or, in many cases, intentionally not saying):

Choose words carefully, so your writing doesn't land with a splat.

EXAMPLES OF CLEAR WRITING

1) “Our company lost money in the fourth quarter.”

2) “We laid off two thousand employees.”

3) “Pittsburgh hired a public relations expert to promote the city.”

4) “Let’s come back to that problem later and see if we share the same goals for solving it.”

5) “Please inform your employees about this and see what they say.”

6) “Your son’s parachute didn’t open, and he died when he hit the ground.”

12) “Our plane reached the target and dropped bombs on it. Few bombs fell where they weren’t supposed to, and not too many innocent civilians were killed.”

13) “There was a traffic jam because a stop light malfunctioned.”

14) “The Engineering Department has laid off ten employees.”

15) “Hallmark makes greeting cards.”

16) “Pig farms can make a large area smell bad.”

These “translation” sentences are clear, precise, and informative. The original sentences are foggy, imprecise, and confusing. They break all the rules of good writing: they have no specifics, no concretes, imprecise wording, passive-voice verbs, and mushy facts.

Were the people who wrote the original, foggy sentences simply incapable of writing better? I doubt it. They knew what they were doing. While pretending to reveal the truth, they were intentionally hiding it inside a cloud of pretentiously imprecise language.

In some cases, the intent may have been well-meaning: Who wants to tell a mother that her son died in a parachute accident or was killed by a bullet? Sometimes we use imprecision as a kindly form of euphemism to inflict less pain on our reader. (But her son is still dead, and she knows it, so what have we achieved by euphemism?)

In most cases, however, the intent of the badly written sentences was more self-serving. A company doesn’t want to admit it lost money or fired employees. An executive hopes his jargon will mask his confusion about a business decision. A general doesn’t want to come right out and say that his planes bombed a village and killed civilians. A student protestor wants to make it seem that burning books and breaking windows is somehow a “liberating” act. A city wants to justify spending lots of money to hire a PR person by making what he does sound important. A teacher wants her students’ parents to think she’s well educated. An industrial farm corporation doesn’t want to admit that its pig farms stink. And so on.

Imprecise, intentionally foggy writing smells like pig manure.

Some of the foggiest, least precise writing I’ve ever read was in a few of the books of literary criticism I was forced to read as an American literature graduate student. Most literary critics write well, but some are simply pompous poseurs; they use imprecise, big-vocabulary words to hide the weakness of their ideas. And these are people trained to study language.

Good readers, of course, can see through a writer’s smoke screens. The result is that the writer not only confuses the reader at the start, but, after the reader figures out what he’s saying (or failing to say), the writer loses his credibility. After that, he’s lost all power to persuade.

One of the great essays on this subject is George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” (Here's a link.) Orwell makes the point that imprecise, clichéd, jargon-filled, wordy, and pretentious language is not just ugly, but in many cases downright immoral.Good writing is honest. It does its best to reveal the truth as the writer sees it. The bad writing in the original befogged sixteen sentences above is not just a mess, it’s a lie.

It bothered him that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen (seen from the front). . .—Jorge Luis Borges, "Funes the Memorious"

Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.—George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.—Mark Twain

"To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit."—William Blake